Photo Credit: Yearbook Reflections. Author hands out books to students[/caption]James Maxey, a local author, came to talk to Orange students about his career as a writer and what steps can be taken to ensure a successful journey as an author. Maxey primarily writes science fiction/fantasy novels and superhero novels. He also has written poetry and a novel that includes a soundtrack.
Maxey got his career start as a kid when he became an avid reader. He loved pulp fiction and comic books. His daydreaming of dragons and superheros eventually led to him writing stories himself.
He has published 10 novels, and has two more that are in the works currently. They are called Cut Up Girl and Bad Wizard. Maxey has published series of works such as the Dragon Age trilogy and the Dragon Apocalypse novels. He has also written anthologies and over 20 short stories.
While talking about how being an author has affected his life, Maxey said, “I think that it helps me deal with life’s pressure.” He spoke about how authors are always actively thinking of their stories, how he is always thinking two to three books ahead, and how, as he has gotten older, his characters have grown too.
The pressure of releasing a new book gets to every author. Maxey says that the promotional work is very stressful and the pressure is always on waiting for reviews to come in about a month after the time the book is put out for sale.
During his presentation, Maxey spoke about six impossible steps that can help you become a professional author. The first was that you have to always be original but also believe that there is nothing new under the sun. The second was to write with confidence but always doubt yourself. Thirdly, you have to follow the rules but also break all of them. The fourth step is to be enthusiastic to create the best work but also work tediously and be sick of every word you write. The fifth step was to know that in order to write a good novel you must first write a terrible one. Lastly, you will know you’re on the path to success when you start to build up a lot of failures.
Maxey talked about his personal experience of first writing short stories and then a lot of poetry. He went through a string of bad jobs around 25 years old and finally got his big break for a novel at 39.
At the end of his presentation, he held a trivia session where students had the chance to win one of his books. All his books are available at Purple Crow Books in Hillsborough and some of them are available at Barnes and Noble. Plus all of them are available as e-books. He is James Maxey on Facebook and also has a blog he updates frequently, Dragonprophet.blogspot.com.
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